Sunday Style Australia

Ollie Henderson embraces the fashion forward future in ‘Sea Punk’d’ by Pierre Toussaint for the Sunday Style Australia, June 13, 2013. Color me curious. Give me a trend that started from a clever piece of prose on various social-media outlets and I’m hooked – pun intended/pun perfected. A specialized version of the rebellious look, the original “Seapunk” movement was generated from the inspired fusion of playful punk and underwater beauty. And while I will admit that theoretically the concept has cheesy written all over it, we must remember that Punk has a long history of being fused with the “prettier” side of style – often creating stunning results. It’s all in the interpretation, and somewhere in this translation a crazy, cool theme took shape and something fabulous was born. Outrageous looks designed to disrupt the status-quo, while this kind of clashing may be a more beautiful-blend, the concept is still clear – Clashing is Cool. Playing with pastels, Michele Mcquillan’s eye-popping bobs mixed with Naomi Mcfadden’s modern makeup, makes Meg Grey’s super, shiny (mermaid approved) styles a fashion phenomenon for any occasion. And while this trend has seen it’s share of controversy (with artistic activists, like Bebe Zeva, having to come out recently and defend the movement against co-opting and commodification) many artists, like myself, live/die by the idea of integrity and creative standards. The sub-culture that surrounds the Seapunk movement may have gathered it’s momentum through media sharing sites, but that doesn’t prohibit the original creators from enjoying the same rights as any other artist. We depend on our great innovators to keep us on the cutting-edge, if we allow pop-culture to continue to pillage through their work without giving them due credit, we will certainly be the ones to suffer.